


What Am I Supposed To Do, If There's No You?

by gabbyxdawson



Category: NCIS
Genre: Angst, Graphic Description, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:40:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22390414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabbyxdawson/pseuds/gabbyxdawson
Summary: - 17x14 - "Soon you'll get better," Ellie whispers to Nick.
Relationships: Ellie Bishop/Nick Torres
Comments: 4
Kudos: 62





	1. Chapter 1

“HEY! STOP!”  
Ellie was panting, breathless, some kind of pain encircling her lungs, … Nick was running way too fast for her, even though she thought she was a trained and athletic agent. How could have she rivalled with these muscles that were three times the size of her arms? At the same time, she was not displeased with the view. Even if Nick was wearing warm clothes, for the winter was cold in Virginia, she could see the muscles in his back and shoulders roll as he ran along with his arms to maintain balance. His ass was also quite sculpted by all the running and bodybuilding he was doing on a daily basis. Going running with him has shaken her daily goat yoga sessions. But it was for the best: her competitive self liked the challenge of running with (or against?) Mr Muscles right there. But sadly, she was always losing. He was always running at least 100 yards in front of her, and when they ended their run, he was always smirking and messing with her for how slow she allegedly was.  
Today was no exception to the rule. When he heard her yell at him, he turned around while running and wildly grinned. “Come on B, what’s taking you so long?”, and, the jerk! He let out a big laugh. But he stopped in the last turn before their finish and waited for her to run all the way up to him. Her lungs were desperately crying for air, and she was so red and hot she could have lit up a cigarette. She knew she looked miserable, and Nick was not going to leave that unnoticed. As he was opening his mouth to tease her (again!), she heard a tyre screeching behind her.  
The rest happened too fast for her to understand what was exactly happening. It just keeps coming back to her in flashes sometimes. Flash. She turns around, surprised by the intensity of the sound. Flash. Of the corner of her eye, she sees Nick looking surprised as well, but some sort of anguish is crossing through his features. Flash. The car is going way too fast, it is going straight towards them, they are going to be ran over! Flash. She doesn’t know how, but she manages to jump out of the way of the car, and a flash of pain crosses her head. Flash.  
She opens her eyes. Why is everything so bright and loud? She feels something warm running across her face. When she touches it and takes her hand back in front of her face, she lets out a small cry of pain as she gazes at her fingers full of blood. She slowly becomes aware of her surroundings when she straightens her aching back, the hard sidewalk against which she hit her head, the grass on which she landed after avoiding the wild car, the street, the familiar street in which they run every week with Nick, … and Nick. On the road, a red stain widening on his white shirt, the car driver getting out of the car, the gun in his hand. The gun in his hand?  
Reality comes crashing down upon her hazy behaviour. Blood rushes in her brain, and she fully makes out what she is seeing: Torres about to be executed, there is no other logical answer to all the puzzling things she is seeing. “HEY! STOP!”, she desperately yells at the top of her lungs. Her cry startles the shooter, who takes a shot out of surprise. The bullet skids on the road, a few centimetres from her shoes. Under Ellie’s powerless gaze, the shooter climbs back up and, as he drives away, he aims at Nick, and another stain blossoms on his shirt. It is as if she were in a nightmare she needed to get out of, to escape this hellish reality happening in front of her.  
But she can’t break away from the grips of this terrible moment, and she only gets back up out of pure fear and worry for Nick. She walks uncertainly to him and falls on her knees when she reaches him. The pain in her head is ringing and she feels her heart beat in her skull, giving her an intense headache. Her right arm dangles lifelessly at her side, but nothing of that matters.  
“Nick.” She lets out his name in a vain breath. His leg is folded under him at a weird angle that makes her repress a retching. She notices the bruises and scratchings on his arms and head as her gaze follows his crushed body. his face getting paler and paler, or is she just delusional? The blood coming out of a wound on his head creates a sharp contrast with his washed-out skin, he who usually as such a tanned and warm face. But the most horrifying things are these two stains growing faster and faster on his torso, as the life escapes out of his body. Repressing a cry of pain, she lifts his T-shirt with her wounded arm, and the nightmare which she wanted to get out of so bad thirty seconds encrusts Nick’s belly. The fact that he is dying becomes too real for her. Her breath starts to shake. A flash of pain spans her chest. Her vision blurs out. Eventually, a merciful dark veil lightly wraps her eyes and she finally lets out of all the ache and the anguish to fade out in a kind relief.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y'all! Thank for liking the first chapter that much, I hope you'll enjoy this one as well. Sorry if the chapters are too short, but I'm writing in between in classes, so I don't always have the time to write as extensively as I'd wish to. Hope you'll like this new chapter anyway!

When the EMTs finally arrive on the scene, they see a Latino male, bleeding extensively from a gunshot wound and a serious gash, made by a sharp shock against a large body. His leg is broken, bruises are budding, and several cuts are scattered across his body. At his sides, a blonde female, less severely hit, but she nonetheless presents signs of a severe concussion. The strangest thing to the paramedics is how hard it is for them to make the young woman let go of the man’s hand, which she desperately grasps. She faintly opens her eyes, not seeming to realize where she is. To the paramedic treating her, she only says “Nick…” and falls again in a blessed unconsciousness. He guesses it is the man who is being taken in charge by his colleagues, who is worse shape than her. Such in bad shape that his heart gives in on the ride to the hospital. Despite the sirens yelling, the ambulance rushing through the streets of Richmond, are they going to make it in time? The EMT desperately shocks him, but the young man remains unresponsive and the flat line tolls the bell of his life.  
When they eventually make it to the hospital, everything seems beyond all hope. But not everyone has given up on the dying agent yet. When Ellie hears the icy sound of the flat line, her first reflex is to jump out of the gurney she was lied in at the shooting scene and rush in the ICU room where the doctors are trying to save Nick. All they see is a blonde tornado crashing in the room and, too shocked to react, witness the desperation on her face. All Ellie feels is that she is losing Nick and she has to save him. Isn’t that what he does on a daily basis? Save her from bullets and hopelessness, danger and dark thoughts? What would she do without the banter between them, his annoyingly, egoistical behaviour? She knows she does not need any man to feel valuable in her life and trust herself, but with Nick… The fact is that they complete each other, undoubtedly wholly. Their two separate beings sure are enough on their own, but when they are together? It’s transcendent. And she needs him to know that, to feel that as well as she senses it, when they talk together, smile to each other, mess with each other, laugh, fight together, even in the silence, in that deeply rooted tension that says a lot more than words could ever do. When she talks to Nick in that cold, sterile, blood-filled room, her voice dully resonates with that tension and urgency, as if she were trying to bind Nick back to the living world with that vocal link only.  
“I swear to God, Torres, if you ever dare to give up, I will follow you to the ends of every unimaginable world, I will track you down, and I will bring you back all by myself. I swear I will. If you ever dare to give up on me, I…” Her voice, firm until then, breaks. She gasps for air. Words are caught in her throat, because she cannot fathom the reality she is stuck in. “HOW COULD YOU GIVE UP ON ME? I FORBID YOU TO LEAVE ME!” Her head is about to explode. She falls on her knees and her body shakes, tears streaming down her face. The silence in the room is deafening.  
The beep of the heart machine, signalling Nick’s heart has started beating again, resonates then like a promise meant for her, and her only.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the feedback! Enjoy this new chapter.

“I’m fine! I’m telling you, it’s okay.”  
Ellie wanted to get out of this hospital room so bad. She was getting crazy, trapped between these four walls when she could have been out there, finding who tried to get Nick and her shot. But that stupid doctor would not let her go because of the concussion she might have gotten when she hit the sidewalk.  
“Please, agent Bishop, you have to let me do my job,” pleaded the young intern, who was not ready for this blonde fury. “And you have to let me do mine!” she retorted. “Bishop!” Gibbs’ voice rang out in the box. The grey-haired man came closer and took a look at the gash she had on her forehead. “I swear I’m fine, Gibbs, you have to let me hop back on the case. The car was a grey SUV, and I even have a partial. It’s…” “Bishop!” Her name in his mouth clacked like a whip. She looked up and saw concern painted on his face. “You’re not okay. I want you to stay here as long as the docs say it’s not a green light for you to come home. And I don’t want to see you either tomorrow or the next day, you need rest.” A wave of anger raged through her body. “Come on Gibbs, you can’t sideline me! No when Torres is lying in a bed, this close to dying, and the son of a bitch who did that on the loose!” She jumped out of the bed to confront her boss, but a sudden dizziness clouded her eyes and she staggered. Gibbs took her in his arms and pushed her back lightly on the bed. He cupped her face and gently declared: “No, Bishop, you’re not fine. I’ll need you when you’ll be at the top of your game, because it’s only then that you’ll be useful to the case and Nick.” When she saw her bright blue eyes reflecting only concern for her, she felt her own fill with tears. She felt so tired at once, as if her body had suddenly decided to give up. She then decided to take a nap, just a few moments before going helping Gibbs and the team, despite what he said. She was fine. She was… “It’s because of the concussion, we’ll keep her a few days more to take care of that”, were the last words she heard before entering a blessed sleep.

When Ellie woke up again, she felt confused at first. Were the flashes she had in her head just a nightmare? But the hospital surroundings painfully brought her back to reality. The upside of it all was that her body felt much better than… What day was it, actually? She stood up and grabbed her phone on the chair with her clothes. When the screen lit up, she first thought she was dreaming again. The accident has happened on Monday and today was Wednesday. Had she slept for two whole days? No wonder she was feeling fine as hell. But then, her second thought immediately went to Nick. She got dressed as fast as she could with her arm in a sling – her shoulder was not okay at all, actually – and she asked a nurse in the halls where Nick might be.  
She slowed down her pace when she arrived near Nick’s room, afraid of what she might find. And the nightmare, which she had thought was held back in her mind only, appeared in the guise of this sterile cubicle, where Nick’s shattered body was lying still. The beeps of multiple machines were the only sign something in Nick was still alive, desperately beating to try and keep him animate. She got closer with a hesitant step and fully made out the bruises covering the few portions of her skin she could see, the reddish gashes, and the faint breath making his chest go up and down. The sight of the latter lifted a tiny weight of her heart, despite the tubes connecting his face and arms to the machines keeping him alive somehow. She grabbed his hand and sensed some despair at how fragile it felt in her own, when it usually was so strong and protecting. She stroked the bruises knuckles with a gentle touch. She had so much to tell him, to confess to him. But the words got stuck in her throat. She couldn’t. Not like this. Instead, she bent over him and whispered, “Soon, you'll get better. I promise you I’ll get him.” It would only be then that she could say all that she had on her heart. She gently placed a hand on his wounded cheek and kissed him on the forehead, sealing with a kiss the promise she had made him.


	4. Chapter 4

“It’s like she fuelled by rage only.”  
McGee had called with an emergency campfire in the morgue with Kasie and Jimmy, so that they could deal with the “Ellie problem”. It had been a week since Torres and her had been targeted by this mystery shooter no one could seem to find and she had been back two days later on the field, even with her shoulder still sore from the pain of the accident. Bishop was getting increasingly annoyed and enraged that they did not a clue or a witness about the guy, and her despair was slowly contaminating the rest of the team. She had also had regular mood swings and angry outbursts, something which they could understand given the trauma she was going through. But her behaviour was also having negative impacts on the team.  
“I know, right? She started yelling at me when I told her I did not have anything on the surveillance cameras from that day. I eventually calmed her down, but still,” sighed Kasie. “This is so out of character for her! I mean, I get it, but it’s hard to handle her.”  
“Don’t tell me about it”, added Jimmy. “I tried to tell her to take it easy, with the concussion and all, but all I got was her yelling at me to mind my own business and do my job instead and find whoever shot Torres. I didn’t say much else, because I really, really thought for a second she was going to punch me in the face, she looked terrifying.”  
McGee was hearing it all. He did not recognize the Bishop he loved like a sister either. Every day, he faced her dark and expressionless face, the words they exchanged together were so few that, compared with her, Gibbs was a real chatterbox. If it had all been contained in the bullpen, things would have been fine. But on the field, she also turned into someone else McGee did not like to see come out. When he saw her like that, the only person he could think of was Ziva when she was angry and straying out of her usually sarcastic but composed self. He never thought he would have seen Ellie turn into a silent and lethal assassin, but that was who she was becoming. Two days ago, they were checking a tip someone had given to the Washington PD about someone looking like the shooter in some motel. As they had arrived on the scene, Ellie had jumped out of the car, smashed the door open, and scared the shit out of the poor guy who was staying in the room, but who eventually had turned not to be the shooter. McGee, who had followed Bishop as soon as he saw the look on her face when they got to the location, had witnessed the entire scene; the look of wild, pure rage he had seen printed on her features had sent chills down his spine.  
Kasie cut off his train of thoughts: “You have to do something, McGee. I love Bishop with all my heart, but we cannot work like that.” “I know,” he sighed. “I’ll tell Gibbs about it, and we’ll see what we can do.”

The conversation upstairs between Gibbs, Sloane, Ducky, and Vance was no different.  
“Jethro, I am adamant that Eleanor should not be reinstated yet. Her sole physical condition should have been enough for you to decide that she is not fit for duty,” Ducky reprimanded him. Gibbs looked at him with a tired looked and sighed. “How did you expect me to stop her, Duck? She’s a walking fury. And she’s helpful on the case. If she says she has taken enough rest, that’s her choice and I can’t do anything to stop, especially since she has a signed paper from her doctor.” Sloane butted in. “Come on, Gibbs, you’re the boss here, you know as well as I do that, if you told her to go, she would. I agree with Ducky, and I’m even more concerned about her mental state.” “What’s your diagnosis, Jack?” asked Vance. “I could not speak with her properly, and I might be wrong about that, but I feel like she’s avoiding me. But I don’t need that to say that she most probably has PTSD, among other things, and she is not at all fit to be on that specific case.”  
Of course Jack was right. But how could Gibbs have forbidden Ellie to hop back on the case when he knew all too well what she was going through? She had not lost Nick, yet. But the fear for his life and losing him was something he was familiar with. What was even more frightful for her was that she had not quite grasped the extent of her feelings for him, and now she was furious at herself for not having said it before. Rule twelve did not apply here, he had learned that with Tony and Ziva. How could two co-workers not develop a strong bond when they had to trust each other with one’s lives and rely on each other at all time? It had been foolish of him to expect them not to deepen their friendship into something more. They were both dedicated to each other beyond life, and it was only normal that Ellie would throw her heart and soul into the search for Torres’s almost killer. But he also had to consider the casualties she would leave in her path, and it also included the rest of the team. He had witnessed her erratic behaviour, his arguments with the rest of his people, the expectations she had for them and how disappointed she was they were not as involved in it as she was. It could not go on this way: either Bishop would end up killing an NCIS agent for not going fast enough, or killing someone she thought was guilty of the attack against Torres and her.  
He eventually said “I’ll talk to her” and prayed she would understand his position.


End file.
